Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

“The least flower, with brimming cup, may stand and share its dew drop with another near.”

“Let us be content to work To do the things we can, and not presume To fret because it's little.”

“But love me for love's sake, that evermoreThou may'st love on, through love's eternity.”

“Light tomorrow with today!”

“You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.”

“The English have a scornful insular way Of calling the French light.”

“Thou large-brain'd woman and large-hearted man.”

“An ignorance of means may minister to greatness, but an ignorance of aims make it impossible to be great at all.”

“We overstate the ills of life, and take Imagination... down our earth to rake.”

“Enough! we're tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife, As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life With which we're tired, my heart and I .... In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were loved, used, - well enough, I think, we've fared, my heart and I.”

“Purple lilies Dante blew To a larger bubble with his prophet breath.”

“Gaze up at the stars knowing that I see the same sky and wish the same sweet dreams.”

“The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.”

“The critics could never mortify me out of heart - because I love poetry for its own sake, - and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation.”

“Tis aye a solemn thing to meTo look upon a babe that sleeps--Wearing in its spirit-deepsThe unrevealed mysteryOf its Adam's taint and woe,Which, when they revealed lie,Will not let it slumber so.”

“Life, struck sharp on death, Makes awful lightning.”

“Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do.”

“Yes, I answered you last night; No, this morning, sir, I say: Colors seen by candle-light Will not look the same by day.”

“Books are men of higher stature, and the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.”

“For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.”

“I cannot speakIn happy tones; the tear drops on my cheekShow I am sad;But I can speakOf grace to suffer with submission meek,Until made glad.”

“What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed - and not for pay? Absurd - or insincere?”

“The great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.”

“What is art but the life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?”

“Of writing many books there is no end.”